ABSTRACT
What is security and how should it be studied? For some analysts, security is an essentially contested concept (Buzan 1991). Yet a majority adopt a working definition of security as the alleviation of threats to acquired values. Of course, different individuals and groups will hold different (perhaps conflicting) values, define threats in various ways, and argue about how those threats can best be alleviated. Thus while there is agreement that security is an important value, there is no agreement as to what it entails and how important it is relative to other values such as order or justice. In short, world politics contains many, often competing, security agendas (for useful overviews see Sheehan 2005; S Smith 2005; Dannreuther 2007; Fierke 2007).
